Press
win first prize in Paris Indoors
First
record for Paris World Indoor Championships
broken by the Press: nearly 600 accreditations to
date.
6 February, 1997
MONTE CARLO - Monaco - Just a month from today,
the 6th IAAF World Indoor
Championships will open in the magnificent Bercy
Stadium in Paris. This will be the first act in a
magnificent year for athletics which, will
witness the 25th World Cross Country
Championships on 23 March in Turin’s Parco
del Valentino followed by the World Race Walking
Cup in Podebrady/Prague on 19-20 April and will
culminate in the celebration in August of the
World Championships in Athens.
In the meantime,
the athletics world is heightening attention for
Paris. Numerous stars have pushed forward their
training programmes so as to be in shape to chase
not only athletics glory but also the substantial
economic rewards up for grabs at the Palais
Omnisports de Bercy. For the first time in the
history of athletics the winners - men and women
- of a world indoor title will win $50,000, 2nd
and 3rd pl, respectively $20,000 and
$10,0000. For the relays, the awards will be:
$60,000; $30,000 and $16,000.
As amply
demonstrated in the recent indoor meetings in
Stuttgart, Erfurt and Madrid, the competitive
condition of the athletes continues to improve,
despite the fact that most of them had a
particularly gruelling Olympic year. The most
outstanding example came in Stuttgart from Hicham
El Guerrouj (MAR) and Haile Gebrselassie (ETH):
their 1500m race ended in a new world record for
the Moroccan (3:31.18) and a personal best for
the Ethiopian (3:32.39). El Guerrouj’s
talent as a fast middle distance runner is
unquestionable and his duel with Noureddine
Morceli (ALG) will be one of the highlights of
the coming outdoor season. The Olympic 10,000m
champion’s improvement in this event cannot
fail to astound.
Before his race on
the Stuttgart indoor track, Gebrselassie had a
best performance over 1500m of 3:34.64, outdoors
at Chemnitz in 1997. The fact that he has been
able to cut this time by more than two seconds on
a track which - because of its length and the
consequent increase in the curves - is still more
difficult to run on as the pace increases, means
that Gebrselassie should go under 3:30 outdoors.
Haile Gebrselassie
- who has run the 800 in 1:46 in training - is a
revolutionary: he has created a new era in
resistance running. On the same road, and at his
heels, runs Daniel Komen (KEN), presaging 1997 as
a year of great challenges and perhaps new
sensational records in the 3000, 5000 and
10,000m. Some vision of which of the two will
lead the race for records should come in Paris.
Haile Gebrselassie
will run in the 3000m in Bercy, at which distance
he currently holds the world indoor record
(7:30.72). A record which is likely to crumble at
the next world championships.
But not only the
distance runners are progressing. The
women’s Olympic long jump gold medallist
Chioma Ajunwa (NGR) is showing constant
improvement in this event and in the sprints.
Together with Irina Privalova (RUS) and Merlene
Ottey (JAM) she will make the 60m final a real
thriller.
The heptathlon
(men) and pentathlon (women) will also be
interesting in Paris. All of the world’s
greatest specialists of these events invited by
the IAAF have confirmed their participation,
other than Dan O’Brien (USA) and Jackie
Joyner-Kersee (USA). The USA will be represented
by Steve Fritz, placed 4th in Atlanta,
and Chris Huffins in the heptathlon; Kelly Blair
- 8th in the Olympics - and Kym Carter
will compete in the women’s event. Denise
Lewis (GBR), another rising star of British
athletics will start strong favourite to win the
$50,000 women’s first prize.
But the first
world record of the World Indoor Championships
has been won by a particularly athletic category:
the journalists. 535 have already received
accreditation, a number which is destined to
increase before the Championships and which
demonstrates the excitement around this major
event.
ENDS
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